Super Mario Odyssey on Switch: The Complete Tech Analysis 

when the framerate drop is only down to 58-57 fps, that is a miracle in itself

"It's one of the most inspired Mario game in years and it runs like a dream"... ok, I'm sold.

To tell the truth, I'm perfectly fine with lower resolution if I'll get 60 fps. I'm glad Nintendo took it that way, and I hope more games in the future have the same option Tomb Raider or FE Warriors have - to choose between resolution or framerate.

The amount of work that Nintendo put on this game to achieve the 60fps mark without many compromises is remarkable.

This game is unreal. I cannot believe its running on a tablet. I'm 38 and have owned so many systems I can't even remember. The Switch might end up being my favorite system of all time.

This looks phenomenal. Congratulations Switch owners, and Nintendo on the rave reviews! It makes me genuinely happy to see Nintendo succeed!

Ultimately the switch is a statement of Gameplay>Graphics. But what nintendo shows is that design>graphics too. Its something consoles have needed. The “console wars” have been freaking out over graphics for way too long when in reality they dont matter anymore. The charm is gone. EA can pump billions of dollars into battlefront2(2017) and make it the most beautiful game ever, but no time was spent on the gameplay. Nintendo puts time into making the gameplay fun and enjoyable while making everything designed well too. Im glad that the general mass of gamers now wont give shitty games with pretty graphics a pass now, and good games can be recognized for what they are, good games.

You know a game is big when you go to thw grocery store and see its on cereal boxes.

"switch doesnt have any games" two GOTY contenders in launch year alone. yeah sure

Nintendo once again the masters of optimization, loading times and frame rates

Some nice geometry and textures, I’m also happy with the resolution in home console mode, and 60 FPS 😍

97 metacritic score. Another masterpiece for Nintendo. Game is gorgeous. When was the last time a console got 2 masterpieces, and GOTY possible winners in its first year?

Awesome work as always Digital Foundry. Very much looking forward to this.

i can't wait for my copy to arrive tomorrow!

this looks fantastic

I said this about Sm4sh, and I'll say it again: When Nintendo's inferior hardware is giving us performance like this while the Xbox and PS4 struggle to hit performance targets, maybe it's time to rethink development priorities. Maybe the average customer cares more about performance than flashy effects and whatnot; the recent surge in PC gaming popularity would attest to that. Nintendo's got their priorities straight for once; if this and Spla2n are any indication, it might be like this for a while.

I can’t believe how good this looks on the Switch , all AAA developers take note.

This and legend of Zelda breath of the wild are masterpiece's. In my opinion the best value for money this generation goes to the Nintendo switch.

Excellent video. Thank you for the in-depth analysis it is always fascinating to see the tricks they use to reach 60fps and love how you point out things i would normally miss. Love your work!

Watching this video is hugely reassuring that Nintendo were able to make excellent choices of where to scale the game, especially in portable mode. It also should finally put paid to the people who thought "720p is not high enough" for the Switch screen. They knew exactly what they were doing when designing the Switch and made compromises in all the right places. I'm still absolutely amazed at how a game engine is able to scale resolution and certain effect quality based on how much time it has to render the next frame. Just thinking about how complex that algorithm must be hurts my head. I think any developer attempting that deserves a lot more credit than they typically get.

All people care about is graphics....sad. Nintendo has 2 games out this year on an "inferior" system, both of which will be goty contenders, so clearly they are doing something right. Not to mention that same system is selling left and right. I have to laugh at the people commenting that weren't even alive back in the early 80s when Nintendo basically resurrected gaming back from the dead. So all these critics can thank them as they wouldn't be able to come on here and brag about their super, ultra high 300 frames per second $30,000 20k resoultion capable supercomputer, and how great it is while we play our lowly consoles, without Nintendo doing what they have done for the industry with their massive contributions. Instead these same people will criticize Mario or Zelda, calling them kids games or unoriginal, all while loading up the 30th version of the same COD game that's been out for 10 years....lol. sad, like I originally said

Nintendo’s ability to consistently hit 60fps on weak hardware is legendary. Mario Galaxy ran at 60fps on the Wii. Smash Bros. Melee ran at 60fps. They somehow got Smash 3DS to run at 60fps.

To summarize - Odyssey doesn't the graphics of a PS4 Pro game, but it looks good enough to be the best game of the year!

Digital foundry is a beast! Best analysis on the market hands down! I am from Brazil and already heard about this channel. This is the future ! Congrats DF team !👏👏 big fan from Brazil 🇧🇷

Whoa, this game uses so many incredible tricks I absolutely love it! Like the animation losing speed slowly as you move further away, that’s brilliant. And I’d never guess that Mario Odyssey was running in sub-1080p, since it looks STUNNING. Also, the crazy system it uses in portable mode is amazing! It’s basically adaptive resolution, but vertically INTERLACED. That’s so cool, I never thought we’d see interlacing make a return in 2017 or whenever it came out.

*i wish i had nintendo switch rn*

I love these videos, really great in depth discussion on the technical aspect of the game that regular people wouldn't really notice.

Imagine running this at 4K... would be so beautiful as its such a stylized game.

Why do I watch these videos? Playing at home its like WOW this game looks amazing! Watching digital foundry its like, "if you pause the game and zoom in you can clearly see the visual flaws... this information is never making any game more enjoyable.

Pre purchased and pre loaded ready for midnight to strike. My body is Reggie.

A game doesn’t need the best graphics to be good and this certainly shows that

Despite the limitations, Mario Odyssey is a beautiful game, and could very well be my favorite game of the year. I'd much rather have 60fps than 1080p anyway.

Looks great. Can't wait until midnight

Its a really good game

Looks like a lot of hard work went into this game. Impressive what they were able to do on limited specs.

hey digital foundry, as always this is a perfect rundown of all the features of the game from a technical standpoint, if i may add a suggestion, i would like to ask you guys to also take temperature test of the switch hardware during gameplay, as you say for example that this game pushes the switch hardware to its limits, i would also like to know how the switch operates in terms of how hot it can get, of course this suggestion would only apply to switch games, but reggardless, your content is always highest quality

Come on nintendo, Just make Oddesey bundle deal already!..... Edit: Looked it up, gonna pick up one soon :)

So tired of people who think graphics is everything. What matters most is great gameplay. I have played games with great graphics, but they are boring as shit because the gameplay wasn't very good. I have a Nintendo switch, and I love it! I also have a pc that I mainly use for overwatch. All the games I have bought lately have been for my switch because its so damn fun to play games on.

Just had it as a gift from my sister and boy we’re having a blast with the game. Playing it while on a plane was absolutely fun

Awesome video man! As a tech focused game designer I love this kind of stuff and makes me want more! :D

Really enjoying the Nintendo focused content, DF. Keep it up.

cant wait to see the speedruns of this game

Fantastic, I'm even more excited to play now!

Fantastic analysis. Thanks! I cannot wait for this game. ONE MORE DAY!

I keep laughing my ass off at Xbox fanboys, they have such a powerful platform but the great games can only be found on Switch, 3ds and Ps4 Lmao

Those 2D sections of this game are the best part.

This is an amazing video. Great watch.

Fantastic video John.

nobody plays nintendo games for the graphical quality. they play for the experience.

Nintendo has made all right choices here wish more developers chose 60fps

Can’t wait to play this, looks incredible

"it pushes the hardware to absolute limits" I've been hearing this line for more than decade now everytime a new game comes up wtf

This game benefits more from frame rate than resolution, so I'm glad Nintendo made the right choice on that, and with the huge success of Odyssey, the may even be encouraged to patch it up to full-time 900p.

Not trying to start Console boy War shit, but this is what we are supposed to look forward to in a console and its exclusives. Not an 3rd party unrealistic 4K 30fps med to low settings. 1080p High to ultra 60Fps is way better. Shit I will take 720 as long as its 60fps. New exclsuives should focus on quality of Gameplay. I feel like a lot of Consoles and Gamers are losing sight of that. All to argue opinions.

I remember when I found out that the mario 3d model in Mario 64 is as much as 1500 polygons when you're standing still, but something like 700 when you're moving. Amazingly I had never actually noticed this in gameplay even once. It's quite impressive what you can get away with sometimes in terms of dynamically messing with image quality. Then again with all the excessive (for a console made in 1996 anyway) graphical effects and overkill rendering accuracy the default n64 GPU microcode was using, it could only manage 150,000 polygons or so. (by contrast estimates from homebrew sources suggest if it was rendering polygons the way the Playstation did, it would spit out a good 750,000 of them. Just shows you how much grunt it takes to do fully perspective correct bilinear filtered texture mapping, antialiasing, and environment mapping in realtime - all that stuff together drops raw performance by a factor of 5. It also shows just how much of a raw power advantage that thing really had over the Playstation - it's a good 3 times as powerful, give or take.) I know one of the most promising techniques for VR in the long-term is foveated rendering, but it kinda doesn't work unless you have reliable eye tracking. Foveated rendering works on the fact that your eye only sees in high detail with the fovea, which spans just 3 to 5 degrees. (you can use this technique on a monitor as well, if you have eye tracking, but it just fundamentally makes more sense in VR) Yet in VR the field of view of even current headsets is as much as 110 degrees (and future headsets could get to 200+) So... What happens when you can do eye tracking? Well, you know where the eye is pointing, so you know where the fovea is in relation to the screen. So... You can get away with rendering that 5 degree area at full resolution and framerate, a 30 degree area around that at half the resolution, and the remainder at quarter the resolution and half the framerate. Needless to say the performance improvement you get from this is absurdly huge. And it has a side benefit - the performance gains get better at higher resolution. at 1080p equivalent the technique only gets you about a 50% improvement in performance. But at 8 or 16k (resolutions which you would need in VR ultimately to get it looking like 'reality'), the performance gain can be something absurd like 15-25 times faster, simply because you're barely rendering anything at all at full detail except where the player is looking. An obvious downside of this technique is if you have an audience, you either need to track their eyes as well, but this reduces your performance gains and becomes a bit unreasonable if the audience is more than one or two people... Or, the audience can see straight through the illusion, and spot just how low quality most of the picture actually is. That's one of the more promising things long-term, but it it just one of many examples of this kind of stuff that you can get away with. Clearly shadow warrior was using a variant of this technique without the eye tracking - which, while not completely useless, is however WAY more obvious...

Looks astonishing, all the little touches too... A great piece of software

damn the salt in the comments is real, if you hate nintendo so much just don't buy their products and don't react on videos related to them. also people keep forgetting that the switch is a PORTABLE console. also framerate>>>>>>resolution.

It would be amazing if this video got zero dislikes

The game does look beautiful imo. I love the designs and close up a lot of textures are really nice. The very rare framedrops do not matter that much, since they're so rare. Beautiful game imo. :]

Great video tho, the Switch is being really tested this year and so far it seems like the hardware is not only capable but flexinble as well, cant wait to see what they can do with this little beast!

Waiting for a switch price drop then I’m picking this bad boy up asap!

Can you make Switch game test with HDMI mCable ?

I love John's reviews

Hands down the best Mario game ever taking the crown from Mario galaxy! I said I'd never get a switch, then Nintendo drop Mario odyssey. Then i just had 2 have it!!!This games a masterpiece.

These toxic comments tho

Great stuff all around. I love the game and love the art style. In future (if not now), this will be a blast to play at 4k@60 on an emulator.

thank you for not showing any spoilers :)

What? Mario had momentum in 64! Everyone remembers running too fast, then not being able to slow down before we slid off a cliff....

to people who is trying to shit on the game's graphic, ironically can't find jack shit of difference between resolution either docked and portable, unless pointed by DF XD

Artistically this looks visually pleasing.

Awesome! you guys should do a DF Retro analysis of Super Mario Galaxy for it's 10th anniversary!

I got a Mario odyssey trailer on the video xD

Who needs an Xbox One X when you got games like this.

I need to play this through again

great technical analysis of a great game.

"Pushes the Switch to its absolute max." Please name one game ever made within the first year of a console's life that maxed the console out. Oh wait, it hasn't ever happened. Switch isn't maxed out.

Those shadows gave me a SKYRIM vibe...

what is the song from the beginning and where can i listen to it???? (if it's not a full song, when does it play in the game?)

Super Mario Odyssey is the prettiest game ive every seen and im not talking purely resolution but the beauty and the color and the wacky funny and everything pops its so amazing

This is set to be the GOTY. And there are pissed off fanboys who keeps bashing Switch about its power.

And yet Pokemon doesn't care about any of that...so sad.

Thanks for mostly using scenes and levels that werent spoilers even if its a few hours untill I can play

Here’s a brief explanation on how mario knows when to move his head to look at things Mario’s head turns to the nearest “point of interest”, these points of interest are only placed on things that you can interact with, hence why mario doesn’t turn his head to look at buildings, he can’t interact with them. So he doesn’t turn his head

I got the game early and I'm about 70% done and I can atone that the game is amazing it's the best Mario to date.

This is how you optimize a game for inferior hardware. Bravo Nintendo.

I am playing the game for the first time years after the release. I did find areas where the framerate drops pretty considerably and the animation gets choppy, but luckily it's probably less than 2% of the time. One example that comes to mind is on top of the Inverted Pyramid, I did a ground-pound for a Moon that shook up all the bricks and the framerate dropped to what appeared to be below 30 FPS. In other words, it looked like a 30-FPS game that had a drop in its framerate.

Great video. How do you run your framerate test in portable mode?

Nintendo is still delivering 60fps in most (if not all) of this games. Excelent. This game is one of the reasons to buy a switch instead of a PS4 or XBOX ONE which i'm not really interested.

Error: Super Mario has run at 60FPS since Galaxy.

Yeah, all this talk about frame rates and resolutions and textures and what not is great and all, but did you say they brought back Mario's pasta dreams from SM64? I'm sold!

Brilliant video.

Nintendo... just Nintendo.. FUCKIN AWSOME

People are salty for Mario's success.

This game was such a masterpiece. This and Galaxy 1 are some of the finest games ever made

Gotta love Nintendo - always coming up with clever games, products, and solutions. Thanks DF for another informative video

Back when Switch games actually ran smoothly and looked beautiful, and a drop to 55 FPS was the worst of it. Nowdays it's all 480p 20 FPS crap, and people insist on blaming the hardware.

Locked 60 should always be a priority. Try playing an older PS2 games, the 30 fps ones have aged like shit.

Can't wait till tomorrow!!

Do you guys plan to review the Marsille HDMI gaming edition AA cable?

I love it how in the beginning U guys point out the details like dirt coming off when mario gets wet or that he looks at things in the urban level :). First was done in 1997 by Shadow Warrior Second in 1996 in Resident Evil and Im not even sure if Alone in The Dark hasnt done it earlier. GJ Nintendo ;).